Magician's Wife

by James M. Cain

  “You mean Mrs. Alexis.”

  “Yeah—she’d be better off with a tiger.”

  Quickly Mr. Pender sketched the background on the case. Bud, he said, had been soft on Buster himself, but for some reason hadn’t minded her relationship with Mr. Alexis. So he had loyally “clammed,” as Mr. Pender put it, about the quarrel on the lot, realizing it could mean trouble. But then “Mrs. Alexis got in it, having long talks with him out on the parking lot at night, and in the daytime asking him down to visit her at the hotel. She’s put the house on sale, given up her Portico job, and moved into the Chinquapin-Plaza, with a maid and children’s nurse, and the boy was flattered when she invited him for long, intimate talks. Did you know he talks with a stammer? Little by little she began telling him of Buster’s imitations of how he talks. Clay, I doubt if Buster did it—it doesn’t sound like her, she’s a good-hearted girl, though dumb. And it’s Mrs. Alexis, it seems, that has a gift at such imitations—she’s been in show business herself. Anyway, she did a snow job for real, and that jerk hates Buster now. That’s why he can’t be seen, by her or anyone. When she ripened it up and rang Liz Galbraith about it, the rest was a foregone conclusion.”

  Clay listened with rising dismay and then broke in: “O.K., Nat, and thanks for filling me in—but what I called about: are you still on the case?”

  “Oh, she’s retained me, yes.”

  “How do you mean, retained you?”

  Mr. Pender spoke at some length in highly ethical terms, but when Clay pressed him, explained that Buster’s insurance, “which was paid her some weeks ago,” made it possible for him to invoke the twenty-five to fifty percent rule, “twenty-five percent of recoveries, as retainer for taking the case, fifty percent if we go to court. Or in other words, it seems fair enough that she pay me six and a quarter thousand down, with another six and a quarter due when she’s tried—which it looks as though she’s going to be.” Clay was staggered, but knew he must pick up the tab. He said: “Nat, I feel I should pay that fee—I have reasons we needn’t go into. So when she sends her check, will you hold it? Pending receipt of my check? I’ll mail it here now today.” And then, doing some mental arithmetic: “Or wait a minute, Nat. I don’t keep that kind of money lying around, and it’ll pinch me in on my trip if I send the whole six and a quarter grand. So can I send you half? Part now, the rest to come when I get back and can sell off some stuff that I have? As I say, I have reasons—”

  “Clay,” said Mr. Pender, “whatever you say is fine, and I don’t ask your reasons. She’s a damned sweet kid, that anyone’s entitled to go for and—” Clay opened his mouth to protest it was “nothing like that,” but then realized it might be better if Mr. Pender thought it was “that” instead of something else. He let it ride, and when Mr. Pender asked where he was, told him. “But of course!” exclaimed Mr. Pender. “How stupid of me not to remember! You’re on your honeymoon—and congratulations. My wife knows the bride and can’t say enough in her praise!”

  “Thanks,” said Clay. “And thank your wife.”

  “O.K., it’s going to cost, but you couldn’t do any less, and at least with this guy she can’t lose. Now! Quit your glawming, get on with your life!”

  He did not, however, at once go back to the sitting room. He went to the bathroom and shaved, then got into the tub. The water was running when the tap came on the door, and he hadn’t heard the phone. “Mr. Nat Pender calling,” said Grace, through the door. “Will you take it? Or shall I have him call later?” He took it and listened while Nat revised their arrangement. “Clay,” he said, “we kept talking about various things, and I didn’t get quite caught up until we said good-by. Forget that check for part—forget any check, boy. I wouldn’t louse your trip, not for anything. When you get back will be time—and she gets her check back tomorrow. Now forget her, forget me, forget everything but your wife and having a real nice time.”

  He dressed and at last went back to the sitting room. The TV was still on, but Grace had got herself dressed, in white faille, and the paper was neatly folded on top of the radiator. His eyes as he met hers were blank, with the look card players have, and also criminals facing the law. He glanced out at the bright sunlight, said: “Hm—looks like a nice day after all. They have nothing but rain in this place, but when the sun does shine it’s pretty.” Then he sat down and watched the Baltimore Colts run over the Washington Redskins, or “Skins,” as the announcer called them.

  “May we have that off?” she asked in a moment.

  “Why, sure, if it bores you.”

  He snapped the TV off. “Mr. Nat Pender,” she said, walking over to face him, “is a criminal lawyer. What business does he have with you?”

  “Hey! Who wants to know?”

  “I do. Your wife. Remember?”

  “Why—he called on a certain matter.”

  “Clay, I asked you, what matter?”

  “Well—actually it was a call-back, about something he forgot to tell me. I had called him, as a matter of fact.”

  “About that girl?”

  “Could have been. Well—yes.”

  “He was her lawyer before—he held a press conference for her before we left Channel City. Clay, you had something to do with that?”

  “Well, I don’t just now recollect, I—”

  “Answer me!”

  He hadn’t been meeting her eye, but now, when he had to, saw a woman of ice, once a corporation executive herself, who couldn’t be fobbed off with vague evasions. “O.K.,” he said, “I may have.”

  “Did you pay his bill?”

  On that he grew disagreeable, saying, “What’s it to you?” and other ugly things. Her face, as she stared down at him, didn’t change. “In other words,” she persisted, “you paid him?”

  “Well, goddamit, suppose I did?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve told you! I don’t think she’s guilty!”

  “That’s her lookout, isn’t it? Is it up to you to pay the attorney of every girl who’s falsely accused? Why did you pay this man?”

  “Listen, there’s nothing between her and me!”

  “I didn’t say there was.”

  “Then why the third degree? Why—”

  “You did it, that’s why.”

  “I already said I did! How many times do I—”

  “Stop it! Stop pretending I mean one thing when I’m talking about something else. There’s only one explanation for this, one explanation that explains. You drove that car she saw, the one she thought was Sally’s. You killed Alec. Didn’t you?”

  She stood like something Greek, like something carved in marble, while he slumped in his chair, his eyes not focusing, his mouth slobbery. Then: “Yes,” he whispered.

  She went to the window and stood for a while, looking out at the river, where it wound around the town. When she spoke, her voice was still cold. “What was the quarrel about?” she asked. “Why did Sally break with you?”

  Falteringly at first, by jerks and gasps and gulps, with growing coherence, as confession seemed to steady him, he recounted his scenes with Sally, her visit to him and his to her at her house, and then plunged on to the visit from Buster and his talks with Mr. Pender on the phone. “That’s all!” he broke out presently. “It’s all I know to tell you! If you have any questions to ask, get it over with now, please! I’m not enjoying this any! And I’m not one damned bit sure that I’ll be able to take it if you start up again—later on.”

  “You intend to stand by this girl?”

  “I can’t do less! I can’t walk off and leave her! If you think I can, if you think I’m going to, you’re nuts.”

  “I’m not nuts.”

  So far, though their voices hadn’t been loud, they had been bellowing over a chasm, so far as close communication was concerned. Now, however, she went over, lifted the white faille dress, knelt beside him, and took his head in her arms. “I had to know where we stand,” she whispered, “or I couldn’t make any sense. Now, Clay, I sp
eak. I tell you: “I’m standing by you!... If you want me to!”

  “You needn’t. You don’t have to stand by a rat.”

  “I see no rats in here.”

  “Look around. Maybe there is one.”

  “All I see is a wonderful guy that I love, that I’m married to, that’s my husband. That comes first, before anyone else—daughter, grandchild, anyone. I love them, I can’t pretend that I don’t. But you come first, and I stand by if you want me. ... If you don’t, say it, and I’ll get on the plane and go home.”

  “Are you being funny, Grace?”

  “Then, you do want me?”

  “More than anything on this earth.”

  “Then, that’s settled.”

  She pulled away, sitting on her heels, as though to go on, but he interrupted: “Do we have to keep talking about it? If you’re with me, if you can find it in your heart not to despise me too much—then that’s enough, for now. I’m kind of—!”

  “Groggy?”

  “Sick, Grace. Sick of it!”

  “Darling, there’s more to say, that will—”

  “Then say it, get it said!”

  “That will make you feel better, I think!”

  She climbed in his lap, covered his face with tender little kisses, went on: “It might help a little bit, perhaps, if I stood on the edge and said kind things to you down there in the pit. It’s not enough! I owe you more, not from duty, but because there is more! I’m down in the pit with you!”

  “Hey! I’m in a pit, all right. But you—?”

  “Darling! If I had listened to you that very first night, and not only to you but my heart, none of this would have happened! You made passes at me, beautiful, insolent passes, that made my heart go bump. I could have yielded to you and taken you from her right then! You wanted to be taken, because of what she intended, of what you knew she intended, of what I knew she intended! I burrowed my head in the sand, but I knew the truth in my heart. And so I made myself say no, made myself go on, with my slick, smart-aleck intrigue, using you as a cat’s-paw, as I thought. So you can move over, if you think it’s your private pit! I’m in it with you!”

  She pushed, wriggled, and forced herself into his chair, her dress slipping up, her legs twined over his, her mouth on his.

  21

  CHANNEL CITY LOOKED JUST the same when they got back, in mid-November, as it had when they had gone away except that the leaves had turned brown, yellow, and red. For the effect on his morale, she had insisted that Mr. Pender be paid the full $6,250 he asked and that she be permitted, as a lift on the money problem, to send her personal check, for deposit in his account, for $5,000. She also made him complete the trip, and they went to Memphis, St. Louis, and Denver, winding up at Mankato. Here they stayed with Pat at his estate on the Minnesota River, and he really did his stuff, bringing things to a climax with a big white-tie reception, followed by a dance, at the Ben-Pay Hotel. She was lovely in formal crimson, the labella of her orchids exactly matching her gown. She was vain of her affinity with these flowers, proclaiming that “they like you or they don’t—and as mine last ten days, it just goes to show.” Pat, impressed by such things, became her devoted pal, beauing her around, inspecting the picture with her, and inviting her to the unveiling—“which of course can’t come just yet.” When at last they got home and went to his apartment, he was almost himself again, giving a fine imitation of a brisk, masterful executive when he called on Mr. Pender to find out how things stood.

  It seemed they stood very badly, “and for no good reason, Clay.” The case against Buster, he said, “is wholly circumstantial, and circumstantial cases are weak. I might even have got it quashed except for one thing. This girl won’t let me attack the case against her, this web of circumstance that’s been put together mainly at the wife’s instigation. She insists on a case of her own—that the wife did it, that she killed her husband, by driving up without lights, banging a horn in his ear, and causing him to swerve. She insists that she saw the car, that she got its number, and nothing that I can say, no amount of dope the police collected about it, can unlock her from that story. I’ve explained to her that to set up such a defense she’ll have to take the stand—she can’t stand on her rights and say nothing. In effect she’ll have to start another case and prosecute it herself. She says she won’t have a defense ‘that says I’m guilty, only you can’t prove it.’ That, of course, is something I can’t disregard—it has that strange, sweet smell of the truth. But, allowing for that, it’s all wrong! It forgets something I can’t quite say to her—not in so many words. Clay, you may be fond of this girl—I can’t know how you feel—but her life’s at stake and I’d better say what I mean. She’s what she is: a chantoosie, a striptoosie, a—”

  “Flip-floosie? Is that what you’re getting at?”

  “Well, you said it, Clay. I didn’t.”

  “O.K. She’s that—and looks it, Nat.”

  “And talks it—she sounds like one of those twerps that Jack Benny digs up to do a bit on his show. ... I’m sorry, Clay, if I—”

  “It’s O.K. Her life’s at stake, after all!”

  Mr. Pender was still obviously under the impression that Clay’s interest in Buster was personal, and Clay wanted to set him right. He realized, however, that correction of one impression might very well lead to another, and so once more he let the misapprehension ride. Mr. Pender went on: “Well, since you don’t mind discussing it freely, I can tell you that once she starts this line, John Kuhn will rip her apart. He’s not a wolf at his job—just a good lawyer that’s state’s attorney. But, he’s a damned good lawyer who takes his job very serious. And where she’ll lead with her chin is from having this idea that the wife was just a bitch who came between two loving hearts and started causing them trouble, winding up with this murder. It may have been that—I can’t say it wasn’t. But as John Kuhn is going to develop it, she was the one who broke up Alexis’ marriage, and also she had boy-friends on the side. Clay, you weren’t the only one—you might just as well know it. Daytime, she ran a free-wheeling joint. And—well, you see what I’m up against?”

  “When do you go to trial?”

  “Monday.”

  “Then—I’ll send you your check—”

  “Clay, I told you, forget the check! Whenever—”

  “You’ll get it—before you go to court.”

  “Clay, there’s one more thing.”

  “Yeah? Which is?”

  “Something’s going to be made of Buster’s nagging Alexis to climb up on a ladder to check an installation of overhead rails. But she says it was your idea.”

  “That’s right, I told him to do it.”

  Briefly he recounted the conversation in the cold room, including the Mexico City anecdote, and wound up: “I urged on him the importance of getting them level—any rails that might be put in.”

  “Would you take the stand and say that?”

  After hesitating, Clay said: “All right, Nat.”

  “I know it’s asking a lot,” said Mr. Pender, “to speak for this tramp in public—but it’ll help her in more ways than one. For one thing, it’ll ventilate this charge that she spent the whole summer scheming to break his neck. For another, to have someone of substance up there, to say something on her behalf, will help most of all. In a criminal case it’s not only what’s said. Who says it is still more important. And Mike Dominick won’t be much help.”

  “Oh, Mike’s O.K.—except for the blue chin.”

  “Right! Except for that, he’s fine.”

  Monday, though nearly a week off, seemed to fly in: too many things had to be done. Clay hated it, getting U.S. bonds from his box, taking them to his broker, and having them sold for cash, but Grace eased things by offering to go along. At the Channel City National Bank, as well as at Stone, Stone & Johns, she chatted with the clerks, managing to small the thing down and make it seem quite casual. When they left the bank, she handed him a deposit slip for $2,000, this representing an
other withdrawal from her personal checking account, almost all she had—she having managed to visit the teller without his seeing her do it. He was ashamed, and yet at the same time proud, that she would do such a thing with such offhand ease. At last, when they got home that day, he screwed up his courage to tell her of what he had promised Nat Pender, to take the stand for Buster. But instead of being upset she actually seemed glad. “The one thing that bothered me,” she confessed, “was that we were trying to buy you out—buy ourselves out, as I’m in it as well as you. It sounds good, that we’d put up twelve and a half thousand bucks to help this girl in distress. But we have twelve and a half thousand bucks, or did have, and after all it’s nothing but money. This, though, goes beyond that. It proves that we’ll do what has to be done. Now! Perhaps that makes you feel better!”

  There were other things too, but what frazzled his nerves most were the endless telephone calls, from friends, her friends and his friends, from people they hardly knew, from people they didn’t know at all—requesting the pleasure of their company at lunch, at cocktails, at dinner. At first she sidestepped these invitations, with innocuous little fibs: “Oh, how sweet of you to remember us—and of course we’d be delighted—except for the hectic time we’re having, and will have for a week or two—all sorts of things have come up— we’re here today and gone tomorrow—we’re like bats, flitting hither, thither, and yon—but could you give us a raincheck? So when things do settle down, and we have some time for our friends, before we leave for the West—?” But things grew more and more complicated, her voice shriller and shriller, his mood worse and worse from the jitters. And so at last, after one particularly bad time on the phone, she marched herself back to the bedroom, remaining a while. When she reappeared she was hatted, coated, and gloved and had a packed bag in her hand. “Come on,” she said grimly. “We’re going to Rosemary Park.” She still had her apartment, not having had time so far to store her things and sublet it. He took her in his arms and kissed her, and they moved to her little modernist place. There, for their few days remaining, they had peace. The phone did ring occasionally, but they grinned at each other and let it.